


you are my home

by efreet



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, Parent Death, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/efreet/pseuds/efreet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seto dreams other people's dreams when he's tired. Kano has nightmares when no one's there to wake him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are my home

**Author's Note:**

> this is old and bad turn back now

The Tateyama house has a bedroom for each of them. They’re all relatively small, but light and clean inside. The only furniture within is a single bed, with a small table adorned with a lamp. The beds and sheets are identical, so each room looks exactly the same as the next. But it’s still strange, sleeping in separate rooms when they’d been crammed so closely together before.

Seto is used to Kido sleeping elsewhere, since the girls and boys had had separate bedrooms at the orphanage. Kido had snuck in some nights anyway, when she had nightmares, though eventually all three of them had gotten caught and scolded. But Seto had grown accustomed to falling asleep listening to Kano’s breathing every night, knowing the other boy was only a few feet away at most. Now, at night, the silence presses on his ears. He even misses the snores and groans of the other boys, as loud as obnoxious as they had been.

It’s a little frightening, to have a bedroom all to himself. There’s no one around—he might as well be as alone as he was before he met Kido and Kano, with nothing but a puppy to keep him company. And his dreams aren’t any better, even with how kind the Tateyama family has been. Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle of the night, reaching out for hands that aren’t beside him, and realizes there’s no one there.

That’s the worst moment, when he opens his eyes to find his hands clenched around empty air, panicking. It takes long, dragging minutes for him to remember where he is, alone in the dark.

Tonight, Seto tosses and turns as usual, unable to sleep despite the dark and quiet. It feels like hours before he finally starts drifting off, his thoughts blurring together until they don’t make any real sense. He closes his eyes and lets himself fall asleep at last.

_He’s standing in a room lit only by windows that show pitch black, the light coming from somewhere outside the view. There’s a faint rushing sound, which he recognizes as rain. As if to confirm this, thunder booms abruptly, and a flash of lightning follows. The room is lit up in stark white, devoid of furniture. He can’t see more than a few feet in front of him._

_Thunder booms, and he jumps as the room is plunged back into darkness. Then a voice comes from behind him, weirdly distorted, echoing in a frightening, demonic way. He turns around, but he can’t see anyone there. There’s nothing but pitch black._

_“What are you still doing up? I told you to go to bed,” the voice says angrily. The volume presses against his eardrums, making it sound even less human._

_He takes a step backward. His heart is pounding. He’s terrified. He can feel his hands shaking and his breathing quicken as he stumbles over his own feet, trying to back away._

_“Why can’t you ever do what you’re told? Why can’t you just listen to me for once?” the voice continues, louder still. It seems to be getting closer._

_He presses himself back further, and hits a wall. He gropes behind him for a doorknob he knows is there, but his fingers meet only blank smoothness. His heart thunders in his ears. He has to get out of here. He has to run, before she can get to him._

_“It’s my fault, isn’t it? For raising such a worthless child… That’s what they’ll all say. They don’t know what it’s like…” The voice breaks off in what sounds like a sob, but it’s so magnified and distorted that it’s almost unrecognizable. “If it weren’t for you—“_

_Suddenly, he can’t breathe. There are fingers around his throat, long and thin. Instinctively, he clasps his hands around skeletal wrists, trying to break the grip in vain. His breathing is loud and panicked, and he twists, fighting to get free._

_“If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened!” the thing cries, and the fingers tighten around his neck painfully._

_He coughs, trying to draw breath and escape the crushing grasp at the same time. He can’t breathe, he can’t think, and it hurts, it hurts so much._

_“I hate you!” the voice screams, so loud that he flinches back, and he wants to scream, too, but he can’t breathe—_

Seto’s eyes fly open. He’s tangled in the sheets, and drenched in sweat. Pushing himself upright, he stares across the room, and blinks. His eyes feel strange, almost hot. He swipes at them a few times, but his hands don’t come away wet.

Then he realizes.

He had been using his power without thinking about it. Or rather, he was probably too tired to remember to control it. Usually he makes a conscious effort to block out most mundane thoughts. But the louder the thought, the easier it is to pick up on. Especially if the person is close to him.

He doesn’t know who, but someone in the house is having a nightmare. He hates to use it, but he’s scared, and worried, and… he wants to help, if he can.

Focusing on the wall again, Seto blinks. And listens.

_He’s walking through a park. The weather is nice, and Ayano is there. She’s waving, and he feels himself smile in response. With some surprise, he sees himself and Kano standing beside her—_

He shakes his head. Definitely not the same dream, but at least Kido seems to be having a peaceful night. He tries again.

_There’s blood everywhere. His throat hurts, aches, from where her hands had been before. His fingers are sweaty around the knife. She’s spread out on the floor in front of him. Her eyes are wide and blank, staring up at him. He killed her. She’s dead, and he killed her, his own m—_

Seto jerks himself out of the dream, scrambling out of bed as quickly as he can. It’s Kano’s dream. Of course it is. Kano’s dreams are usually bad, but Seto had always been there to wake him up, before. He doesn’t recall Kano ever having such a vivid nightmare, though. He would have remembered.

Seto’s half-running as he gets into the hallway and pulls open the door to the left of his. He rushes to the bed, one hand reaching out to shake Kano awake.

At the last moment, he pulls back in surprise.

Kano is crying. There are tears trailing down his face, and he’s gasping a little in his sleep. He’s half pressed into the pillow, but facing so that Seto has a clear view of his face.

Seto has never seen Kano cry before. They’ve both seen Kido cry before, though she still tries to hide sometimes. Seto himself has sobbed on both of them more times than he cares to count. It’s probably part of Kano’s tendency to overuse his power, to cover up as much of the truth as he can.

Seto wants to be angry. He should be angry, and he will be, later. But Kano’s sobs are wracking his whole body. His eyes are squeezed shut, but tears are still trickling from them, sliding sideways across his nose.

So all Seto does is reach out across the bed and shake one of Kano’s trembling shoulders, as gently as he can.

“Kano,” he whispers, and even his hushed voice seems too loud in the silence. “Kano, wake up. Kano,”

It takes more than a few repetitions for Kano’s eyes to open. When they do, they flare bright red almost instantly. There’s less than a second before the tear-stained face clears, and Kano appears absolutely fine, as though he’d just gotten a good night’s sleep.

Seto frowns disapprovingly. “I already saw,” he says. “You don’t have to do that,”

Kano sits up with a little effort, rubbing one of his eyes. “Saw what?” he asks innocently. “What are you doing in my room?” he asks, glancing around in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

“You were crying,” Seto answers, sitting down beside him on the bed. Kano is pressed so far back against the wall that there’s enough room. “You were having a nightmare, and you were crying,”

Kano blinks. “No, I wasn’t,”

“Yes, you were,” Seto says hotly. “I saw it. I dreamed it, and then I woke up, and then I knew it was you, so I came to wake you up. And you were crying,” he adds.

Kano frowns, and shakes his head. “Maybe you had a bad dream, instead?” he suggests, very convincingly. “I definitely didn’t have one,”

“Stop lying!” Seto bursts out, and Kano flinches. “I know I didn’t make it up. I’ve never had a dream like that before,” he says, a little more calmly. “…And I don’t remember my mom, anyway,”

Kano pales at that, and some of the feigned collectedness seems to fade. He looks away, as though Seto won’t notice if he can’t see his face.

“Please,” Seto says quietly. “You don’t have to lie to me,”

Kano looks at him for a moment. Then he closes his eyes and opens them again. Abruptly, his face is red and puffy, and there are still tear tracks down his cheeks. His shoulders are shaking, just a little.

Seto reaches out tentatively. “Kano,” he says. He doesn’t know what to do. He knows that Kido likes to have someone wrap an arm around her. He prefers it when he can cry into someone’s shoulder. He has no idea how Kano likes to comforted, because he’s never seen Kano truly upset before.

It’s a scary thought, now that he realizes it.

“It’s okay,” Kano says, unsteadily. He doesn’t react to Seto’s outstretched hand. “I dream about it, sometimes. My mom,”

Seto chances sliding a little closer. “I dream about drowning a lot,” he offers. He doesn’t know what else he can say, at this point.

Kano sighs. “I know that, you idiot,” he says, trying for exasperated. The way his breathing hitches in the middle ruins the effect, though. “I’ve been there when you had nightmares,”

“I’ve been there for yours, too,” Seto challenges. “But…that kind of dream…” he trails off, not sure how to express how scared he had been, within Kano’s nightmare.

Seto leans against Kano, their arms side by side. There’s a part of him that’s afraid Kano will shake him off, but the other boy only pushes against him gently. Not trying to shake him off, just acknowledging the movement.

“You always woke me up before it could get too bad,” Kano says. “I had them more, before I met you and Kido. t’s just… you’re not here, any more,” His voice shakes a little, at the end, and he looks down at the sheets.

“I will be,” Seto promises, the words out of his mouth before he can really register them himself.

Kano looks at him in surprise. “We have our own rooms now,” he says. “You can’t…”

“Ayano won’t mind,” he answers. “I’ll be here. To wake you up. Promise,”

Something in Kano relaxes, and he lets his head fall onto Setos shoulder. “You hate lying, right?” he asks, almost too quiet for Seto to hear.

“Yeah,” Seto says, frowning down at him, confused.

“So, you’ll keep your promise?” Kano asks, and there’s an honest, open hope in his voice that Seto has never heard before.

“I will,” Seto answers.

They stay like that for a long time.

After a while, Kano finally falls back into an exhausted sleep, nodding off against Seto’s shoulder. Seto moves them both so they’re lying down properly, and closes his eyes too. Kano doesn’t wake, only stirs a little to get more comfortable.

Both of them sleep soundly for the rest of the night.


End file.
